by Dave Morris
‘That must have rankled,’ laughed Altor, ‘considering the number of crimes you have committed and got away with over the years.’
Caelestis was about to reply when his attention was distracted by a commotion at the end of the alley they were passing. A Ta’ashim woman in long silk robes and a veil was being molested by two red-bearded Thulander merchants.
‘A damsel in distress,’ said Caelestis.
‘Can’t have that,’ agreed Altor. ‘Hey, you ruffians—unhand that lady!’
The Thulanders turned, but one still held the woman in a brutish grip. ‘What’s the problem?’ he snarled.
‘Yeah,’ said his friend. ‘Can’t a couple of guys that are new in town have a bit of fun, eh?’
‘No, not if it involves manhandling this good lady,’ said Altor.
The first Thulander hawked and spat. ‘Od’s blood, she’s just a Ta’ashim wench. Their sort doesn’t count.’
‘There we must disagree,’ said Caelestis. He and Altor drew their swords. ‘In our view it is pigs like you two that the world can easily do without.’
Both Thulanders wore long axes on their backs, but in the narrow alley they chose instead to draw shortswords.
‘You’re a bit of a stupid little runt to be insulting bigger blokes,’ said the one who had been holding the woman. ‘Now you’re going to end up without your entrails.’
‘You too, pal,’ said the other man to Altor.
A sudden flash of light forced Altor and Caelestis to shield their eyes. The alley was filled with the stench of sulphur. As the yellow smoke blew away, there was no sign of the two Thulanders. Their weapons lay on the ground.
The Ta’ashim woman was standing a few paces away. By her feet were two piglets that stood squealing indecisively. She stepped briskly forward and gathered them up—popping them into a sack that she produced, as far as the two young friends could tell, from nowhere.
‘It was very kind of you to take the trouble to help me,’ she said in an exotic lilting accent.
Altor smiled affably and sheathed his sword. Caelestis lifted his own over his head, dangled the blade straight down, and dropped it dextrously back into its scabbard. ‘In the event, madam, there was no trouble,’ he said, still a little unsure if he could believe what had happened.
As the woman came forward they noticed the heady scent of jasmine pervading her robes. She stepped up to Caelestis and tilted her head. Behind her veil, perhaps she smiled. ‘This unlocks the secret doors into my garden,’ she said.
Caelestis was puzzled until he felt her press something into his hand and, looking down, saw a large silver key. He shrugged. ‘I don’t understand. Where is your garden?’
‘There are many ways there, all over the Ta’ashim world. What I say may seem baffling to you now, but listen nonetheless. If you are in need of a place to hide, then a hound will guide you to the scented garden of Fatima. Go with God.’
She bowed and swept past as silent as silk.
Caelestis looked at Altor. ‘What do you think that was all about?’
Altor gave a discreet cough. On the assumption that the woman was trying to arrange an assignation with Caelestis, he had been studiously looking the other way. ‘Well...’
‘Pah, do you really think I’m fool enough to keep a rendezvous with a Ta’ashim sorceress? Look what happened to those two.’
‘So, are you going to keep that key, or throw it away?’
‘It’s solid silver! I’ll keep it to trade with the Faltyn—Oh, no, I forgot. I lost the ring.’
With all the excitement, Altor had not noticed. ‘How?’
‘A dice game with a bunch of sailors,’ said Caelestis resentfully. ‘All my money too. I’m sure they cheated, God curse them. I hope their ship sinks and they all drown.’
‘I’m sure you don’t mean that. Now, according to Ormrud’s directions we need to go down that street and around the next corner.’
They arrived at a butcher’s shop where they had been told Sussurien had lodgings. Inside a bearded giant of a man stood beside a marble slab on which he was dismembering a carcass. His cleaver struck the raw meat with remorseless thwacks. His eyes betrayed no emotion as he saw Altor and Caelestis enter—but the cleaver slipped, striking the stone of the slab with a metallic shriek.
He glowered at his chipped cleaver, then nodded towards the stairs.
Still no word had been spoken. Altor and Caelestis looked at each other and crossed the room. The bearded man watched them with eyes like droplets of hard resin.
‘I have the strangest feeling we were expected,’ said Caelestis under his breath as they began to ascend.
There was a single door at the top of the stairs. The sounds of the street outside only intensified the expectant hush. As Altor raised his fist to knock, in the shop below they heard the butcher start to hack once more at the flesh on the slab.
Five:
The Exile
The room was plain. In a carved wooden chair like a primitive throne, a man sat at the window. He was drawing at a tall hookah that stood beside him, its bubbling the only sound in the room. The smell of scented tobacco smoke did not quite mask the stench of blood from the shop below.
Prince Sussurien turned with a rustling of stiff robes. His jewellery and gilt-decorated tunic, catching a shaft of morning sunlight, became afire with stars. The chair creaked as he shifted his body so that he was half facing his visitors. In the centre of his gold turban, a limpid red gem glowered like a third eye.
His stare was intense and unnerving. With his swarthily handsome face he looked like a man capable of great passion and cruelty. For a long moment he sized up the two young heroes, then he gestured to the cushions piled against the wall. Sharp white teeth flashed as he smiled.
Altor folded his arms and stayed where he was. Caelestis sat down on a cushion but he watched Sussurien like a cat, ready to spring up at the slightest sign of danger. From where he sat the sunlight was behind Sussurien. Passing through the filigree screen over the window and through the dusty air, it cast a hosts of narrow beams across Caelestis’s face. The beams all appeared to radiate from the exiled prince. The spider’s web, thought Caelestis.
‘I knew you would come,’ said Sussurien. It was the first words he had spoken since they entered. His voice, soft and deep, suggested the quietest beat of an enormous drum.
‘We are looking—‘ began Altor.
‘You seek the Sword of Life; I, the Sword of Death. By uniting we will achieve what we desire.’
Altor scowled. ‘I’m not going to pretend I like the idea.’
‘But we’ve got no alternative,’ interjected Caelestis. ‘So, all right—what’s the next step?’
Sussurien held up a little mannikin that looked as if it was carved from diseased wood. ‘I have here the Hatuli—literally, the “Bring-hither”. It was constructed by the great wizard Saknathur, who lived five centuries past. My agents found it for me in the ruins of his fortress.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Altor flatly. ‘How’s it going to help?’
Sussurien paused before replying. If he was annoyed by Altor’s tone, his steady smile betrayed none of it. ‘The Hatuli has a very interesting power. It can find anything that is hidden.’
‘Great,’ said Caelestis. ‘Just tell it to find the swords and we’re in business.’
‘If it were operative it could locate them easily. But it is not.’ He set the mannikin down on the floor by his chair. There it stood waiting, lifeless. ‘Its eyes are missing. They were two tiny emeralds of flawless beauty, and I believe they were prised from the Hatuli’s head by Hunguk the Pirate King. It was he who slew Saknathur and ransacked his fortress.’
‘So who has them now?’ asked Caelestis.
Sussurien drew again on his hookah, and his smile broadened into glee. ‘Hunguk still. He is immortal, and his ship now sails the seas of myth. So: your quest is to steal the emeralds back from him.’
Altor fixed him with a wary glare
. ‘I think you’re having a joke at our expense, Sussurien. Hunguk the Pirate King is just a story sailors tell. If there ever was such a man, he must have been dead for hundreds of years.’
‘No, he is not dead—nor truly alive. Hunguk was too great a man for this world, too great to conform to its laws.’
‘Too great, you say? Those are God’s laws—!’ snapped back Altor, only to catch himself sounding like mad Sir Tobias.
Sussurien shrugged as if Altor’s beliefs were of no consequence. ‘We are in the last days now, and those who are born and walk the world’s face are pale in comparison with the mighty heroes of times past.’
‘The great entities who linger in the world without ever tasting death,’ said Caelestis, remembering Ormrud’s words.
‘Just so. I have heard it said by the scholars of your faith that Hunguk forfeited his soul for the bloody rapine he committed. They say he is doomed to roam the world till the Hour of All’s Ending. I prefer to think he was too great a man for heaven or hell. He has sailed the only course he could—into myth.’
‘Or he could just be a pile of bones on the ocean bed,’ said Altor. ‘In which case we’d be going off on a fools’ errand.’
‘Over the years, many have claimed to see his ship the Devil’s Runner bearing down on them out of fog or storm. Not all can be liars.’
Sussurien allowed a few moments of silence for them to take this in, then reached for a parchment. ‘I have prepared this astrological chart to show when and where the Devil’s Runner will next appear on the earthly plane. It is a point some sixty miles offshore, in the gulf of Marazid, and one day in the future. From my planisphere I know that the Swords of Life and Death are located somewhere in the city of Hakbad. Once you have recovered the emeralds, go there and seek me at the House of the Desert Breeze.’
He tossed them the chart and turned away to gaze out of the window. The audience was at an end.
Altor rolled the chart and tucked it into his belt. ‘Have you any suggestions on how to get there?’
‘No,’ said Sussurien in a bored tone. ‘That is your problem.’
They walked in silence for a time while Altor brooded. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said at last.
‘Ha!’ cried Caelestis sarcastically. ‘You think you’re the only one? Chasing off to sea to find an immortal pirate’s magic emeralds, indeed. But what else can we do?’
‘You heard what Sussurien said. The blade’s in Hakbad. We could go straight there.’
Caelestis shook his head. ‘It’s a huge city—bigger than Tamor and Ferromaine combined, from what I hear. If we still had the Faltyn... But as it is we could spend a dozen lifetimes and still not find the blade.’
‘Even so, it sticks in my craw having to trust Sussurien. Something about him made my skin crawl.’
‘We don’t have to trust him,’ said Caelestis. ‘In fact, Ormrud warned us about just that. I don’t think we have any choice other than to work with him for a while, but as for trust... Well, you’re too trusting at the best of times. Better leave that side of things to me.’
Their wandering had brought them to the outskirts of the city proper. Seeing a fishing village in the distance, Caelestis suggested they might walk out and enquire about hiring a sailing boat. ‘Er, you do have some money left, don’t you?’ he added.
‘Not enough. Still, let’s take a look. There might be an old skiff for sale that we could patch up ourselves.’
They soon found the village was further than it seemed, because the track meandered between a number of low, sealed, stone buildings. Time wore on towards midday and the heat soared. Dry dust rose chokingly from the road as they walked.
Turning a bend, they came across a man of Coradian stock sitting by the roadside drinking from a gourd. Cool wine splashed in the sunlight as he tilted the gourd to his mouth. At the sight of this, Caelestis licked his dry lips enviously.
The man noticed them and smiled. ‘We must swelter in the sun while those who lie in these tombs enjoy the cool shade. But they must endure their parched throats, as this wine is only for the living.’ He offered the gourd. ‘Join me?’
Caelestis needed no further invitation. He sat on a pile of stones and took a long swig from the gourd. The wine was delicious.
‘Have you come far?’ asked the man, mopping his sunburned brow.
‘From Crescentium.’
‘And going far?’
Caelestis took another gulp before passing the gourd to Altor. ‘Only to the fishing village yonder.’
Altor, being in a suspicious mood after their meeting with Sussurien and fearing that his friend might blurt out the details of their quest, hurriedly changed the subject. ‘These strange buildings around us as mausoleums, then?’
‘Indeed. This is where the Ta’ashim notables buried their dead in the days before our forerunners came from the north to conquer Outremer.’
‘I thought you weren’t Ta’ashim yourself,’ said Caelestis, nodding. He got the gourd back from Altor and took another swig.
‘I’m from Krarth originally,’ said the man.
Altor gave him a searching look. ‘Ah yes, that’s the accent: Krarth. And where are you travelling?’
He shrugged. ‘In neither one direction nor the other. I sit here in a company of three—I, my shadow, and my memories. My companions are not quarrelsome, and that is as much as one can ask for in this life.’
‘Admirable sentiments,’ said Altor. ‘Still, time is pressing and we must be on our way.’ He took the gourd out of Caelestis’s hands and gave it back to the man.
Caelestis cast a weary glance towards the village. For all their walking it still seemed no nearer. ‘The thing of it is,’ he confided suddenly, ignoring the scathing look he got from Altor, ‘we have to rendezvous with a certain vessel sixty miles out in the Gulf of Marazid. We must find a way to be there tomorrow.’
The man whistled through his teeth. ‘How fortunate that you mentioned this to me, for I truly believe your quest would have been doomed to failure if you had not. You see, it is well known that at this time of year the Gulf is frequented by a gargantuan sea monster called the Dendan. The local fishermen are in fear, and cling to the shore as a babe to its mother’s breast. You would never have found anyone willing to lend you his boat for such a venture.’
‘In that case—‘ began Caelestis.
‘Excuse us,’ said Altor. He grabbed Caelestis by the arm and dragged him off to one side. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘Eh?’
‘See if this phrase rings any bells: “You’re too trusting at the best of times.” I’m too trusting? So how come you’re telling this guy everything?’
‘He mentioned the Dendan. That bit’s on the level. Let’s see what he has to say, anyway.’
‘Let’s not!’
‘Just because he’s from Krarth you think he must be an agent of the Five Magi. I’m surprised at you, Altor.’
The man came over and extended his hand. ‘I realize we haven’t been introduced. I’m Galor the tomb-robber.’
Altor stared at him. ‘You admit to plundering these tombs?’
Galor smiled sheepishly. ‘They’re Ta’ashim. We stole their whole country.’
The heat, wine and lingering fatigue from the night before had all conspired to unfocus Caelestis’s thoughts. ‘Tomb robbing is not necessarily the vilest of crimes,’ he announced.
Altor scowled at them both. Seeing he had nothing to say, Galor went on: ‘But listen now, because I can help you in your quest. I was sitting here a few days ago when I was taken by an urge to have gulls’ eggs for my supper. There is none to be found in the necropolis, of course, so I went up there to see if any gulls were nesting in the hillside.’ He pointed to a steep path beyond the tombs.
‘Gulls’ eggs,’ said Caelestis dreamily. ‘Scrambled, with coriander and thyme seasoning, served on toasted muffins with a sprig of parsley...’
‘My friend, what I found was the mother of all eggs,’ said
Galor, breaking Caelestis’s reverie, ‘for I discovered a great marvel. Up there is a cave where the fabled Roc has its nest.’
‘A nest of rocks?’ said Altor impatiently. ‘Absurd!’
‘Ah, you do not know the Ta’ashim legends. The Roc is a giant bird which the mariner Simbar encountered on one of his voyages. He used it to invade the inviolable citadel of Shazireh the witch by tying himself to its claw while it slept. When the Roc took to the air, it carried Simbar aloft with it.’
‘And you suggest we should try the same trick.’ Altor nodded. ‘I see. Well, Galor—‘
‘Oh no, young sir. I’m not suggesting that at all. I just thought you might want to steal the Roc’s egg, which you could sell in Crescentium and hire a ship strong enough to withstand the sea monsters of the Gulf.’
Altor was taken aback. ‘So, you’re not proposing we should tie ourselves to the Roc’s claw like Simbar?’
Galor laughed. ‘How would you make the bird land at the right spot? No, it would be suicide.’
‘Too right!’ declared Caelestis with feeling.
But Altor, now that he no longer felt he was being made to go along with the scheme, had started to give it serious consideration. ‘We could make reins,’ he said, ‘and ride the giant bird to our rendezvous. I’m a good horseman.’
‘Horses,’ pointed out Caelestis, ‘only leave the ground for a few seconds at a time.’
‘That is a good point.’
‘Why don’t I show you the Roc’s nest anyway?’ suggested Galor. ‘I know a route where we can sneak up quite close without being seen. If you decide then that the prospect of flying on its back is too daunting—well, at least you’ll have a tale to tell your grandchildren.’
Caelestis waved his hand expansively. ‘Why not? Looking can’t do any harm. Lead the way, Galor.’
Galor took them up into the hills. In was a hard climb, doubly wearying in the baking heat of the afternoon. By the time they reached level ground and turned to look back the way they’d come, Caelestis and Galor had between them finished the gourd of wine. Altor remained thirsty, preferring to keep a clear head even if it meant a dry tongue.
